Chapter 6

"I could stay with you, for a while, maybe longer, if I do..."

I didn't know what to expect when Mary led me into her bedroom. In the past twenty-four hours, our lovemaking went from passionate to orgiastic as she was joined by Debbie.

However, her offer to "just cuddle" was just what the master, er... doctor, ordered.

So, cuddle we did.

We didn't even take off our clothes. We just lay on her bed, holding each other, not saying a word, but having everything known between us.

Then, somehow...

I opened my eyes, and I found, to my initial surprise, that I was hugging Aimee, and not Mary. Then I found out the reason for my surprise. I wasn't looking at her from my own point of view, but that of Debbie.

Aimee wasn't crying anymore. She was looking at me--well, Debbie--very expectantly.

"Aimee," I called softly with Debbie's voice.

"Yes, Jim?" Aimee answered. Somehow, her mystic powers knew that she was talking to me, even though it was with Debbie's voice.

"I... I can't... enslave you. It isn't be right," I told her.

"A part of me understands, Jim," Aimee replied. "At the same time, another part of me feels rejected."

I sighed. "I'm not rejecting you, but I need to understand this power before I can force myself upon anybody else. You certainly should appreciate that."

"I understand what you are going through, but only intellectually. Emotionally, I find you are a very compelling person. There is a void that I had never known before I met you, Jim, and it seems that only you can fill it now."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"The same way that I know it is you talking to me and not Debbie, even though it is her voice that I am hearing," Aimee explained.

I said nothing in response. I needed to think things through. Suddenly, I was aware of Debbie's presence. Well, of course she'd be present in her own mind, but up until this point, it had not occurred to me.

Debbie thought at me, "Jim, dear, Aimee will be fine. She knows that you will not take me from her. She knows that you haven't fully rejected her... you'll give it a lot of thought, and within time, you will grant her wish."

I understood what Debbie was "saying," but I didn't respond. It was just like Aimee's description of understanding intellectually, but not emotionally.

Debbie continued. "I share your thoughts... even now, with you somehow inside my head. I know you desire Aimee, and yet I feel no jealousy at all, nor do I feel any about your relationship with Mary. There seems to be enough of you to go around."

"Debbie," I thought to her. "I just need to know one thing..."

Debbie read my mind. "No. Aimee and I don't have any relationship with each other than being very close friends and our business relationship. Nothing sexual. Up until today, I had never even considered being with another woman."

This surprised me. I had figured from her antics in the bathroom earlier with Mary that Debbie had some experience in loving another woman.

Again, Debbie had followed my thoughts. "I believe that the bathroom was the first time for either of us. We were sort of aware that you were near, but it was more like a sharing between the two of us."

Then, the strangest feeling surprised me. Debbie was blushing, and I was feeling it.

I didn't want to embarrass Debbie any more, so I left her.

Mary was still hugging me. Wow, how much I loved both of them!

Then it hit me. Aimee had told me that both Mary and Debbie loved me. How does one react to that?

My mind was on overload. I had more sex in the past couple of days than I had in any week during my previous life.

Now, don't think that I'm an unlovable oaf, but to tell you the truth, I had never had a relationship where I could truly state that I was in love with somebody else. How does one react now that there you are in love with two people, with a third claims that she's in love with you, and doesn't mind the other two?

Even more worrisome: how does one deal with the fact that Mary and Debbie, who love me, and who I loved, tell me that they are my slaves?

I knew that I couldn't handle this alone. Debbie and Mary didn't seem to need to deal with this--they simply declared their enslavement to me, and left everything to me. Not that I disliked them for that; I somehow knew that it really wasn't their fault.

The big wild card in this whole situation was Aimee. Unlike Mary or Debbie, she knew what was going on... seemingly even before the entire situation and all of its nuances were even known to me. Debbie had said she had a psychic quality about her, but this whole thing was starting to spook me out.

I will be the first to admit that as an adolescent, I had fantasies where one woman (or a whole bunch of them) were my slaves... who lived to cater to every one of my whims. Nevertheless, this was reality. I seemed to have acquired two slaves, and the future looked like there were more people that would want to be willing join my harem. The whole situation was fucking ludicrous. I mean, I was just adjusting to myself being twelve years older than I had remembered myself, and now I have a harem?

Mary, as I said, was still hugging me. She seemed to be attuned to my deepest thoughts and knew that I didn't want a stiff banging, but just some time to think things over. Still, I was masculine enough to appreciate the warmth of Mary's body next to mine, even feeling Mary's erect nipples poking into my side.

Despite the fact that it was early afternoon, I fell asleep. For once, thankfully, I didn't go outside of my mind to capture a slave. I guess my body needed the rest. It's one of the few times since I woke up from the coma that I don't think that I dreamt... at least, if I did, I have no recollection of it.

I woke up about 3 AM, and found Mary still holding me.

Life was wonderful. I drifted back to an uneventful and blissfully quiet sleep.

I woke up around 9:30 in the morning, expecting Mary to still be in bed with me.

She wasn't.

Then I did something that told me that something had changed. I felt around for her... with my mind. She wasn't in the apartment, nor was she in Debbie's unoccupied apartment. In fact, neither Mary nor Debbie were in the entire building.

Without thinking about what I was doing, I managed to make contact with Mary. She was in a bank, and I realized after a few seconds that she was at work.

Mary wasn't working, however. I heard her boss telling her that he was sorry to see her go, but that she looked very happy and he wished the best for her.

Mary? Quitting her job? What was going on? Was she leaving me?

Debbie was nearby. I could feel her presence pretty close to where Mary was. I made a connection to her, and then knew that Aimee was with Debbie.

Mary soon met up with Debbie and Aimee, and they went shopping. I distinctly heard Debbie mention the word "wardrobe."

I broke off the connection, and thought about this ability to reach either Mary or Debbie via some mind link. It was weird. It was unbelievable, and it was totally fucking true.

I considered the consequences. I could possibly enslave every woman on this planet. I would be very powerful.

I would also be a rather obvious target to any male who got wind of this ability.

This wasn't something to advertise, obviously. My instinct to back off on this power and not enslave Aimee seemed more and more a good idea as I thought of these things. I'm sorry, Aimee... you will just have to wait.

I knew that I had to control this... this power. I hadn't intended to ensnare Mary, and up until I saw Debbie in my dreams, I hadn't even considered the possibility of enslaving anybody else.

Could I enslave males, or was my "power" just limited to females? I knew there was one way to find out, but the idea was easily rejected. I had found the idea of females being enslaved to me to be, let's say "distasteful." I certainly didn't want any male slaves... especially sexual slaves.

Yep. When it comes down to it, I guess I'm your typical male chauvinistic pig. I was determined that if that was the case, I was going to be one M.C.P. that would be careful from now on.

Mary's telephone rang, and I instinctively answered it, naturally assuming it to be Mary wishing to talk to me.

It wasn't Mary. Instead, it was some secretary from Veteran's Affairs. She asked if I was Captain James Montgomery, and said that she had a few routine questions to ask me about my disability.

The questions she asked were sort of deja-vu, since I had gone over them with some people when I was still in the hospital.

A feeling of uneasiness grew over me while the secretary asked me the questions, even though they seemed standard.

Then it hit me. How did anybody know that I was staying at Mary's?

In the middle of a question, I asked the secretary how she got this number.

There was a pause, and she said, "This is the number we have on file for you. Isn't this the correct telephone number?"

"Um... it is. I don't recall giving this phone number out to anybody, though," I responded. I was feeling quite spooked.

"Let me check, Captain Montgomery," the lady said. There was another pause, and she said, "It says here on your file that you are staying with a Lieutenant Cadley."

How the fuck did VA know that? I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stick out. What the fuck was going on? Was I being followed? I had heard horror stories about the Intelligence agencies back when I was in the service, and Gordon Liddy was a recent memory from before I was in my coma.

"Well," I said when I heard the lady pause. "I am over here right now, but I've rented an apartment elsewhere. Mary... Lieutenant Cadley has a small apartment."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Captain," the lady said quickly. "I didn't mean to imply... oh! OH! No... that wouldn't do at all! I'm really very sorry. Can you give me a telephone number where you would prefer to be called?"

The lady seemed to be a bit nonplussed, apparently at what she figured to be some uneasiness about Mary's reputation.

I told the lady that I hadn't gotten a telephone installed yet, but that I would call her back in a few days when I got one. She gave me her number, and I rummaged through Mary's apartment looking for a pencil and paper to write it down. Doing that, I put the paper into my wallet.

The lady hung up, and I mulled about how people could have assumed that I'd be staying at Mary's. I had thought that our personal relationship had not been something that would have been on any official records.

I idly wondered what else were on those records, and who would be interested in them.

Another idle thought crept in: could somebody be interested in me, Captain James Montgomery... and... quite possibly... this power that I seem to have over Mary and Debbie?

I found myself brooding about my power and that disturbing phone call from VA. It consumed my entire thought process. I couldn't think of anything else.

In the late afternoon, there was a soft knock on the door. I knew immediately that it wasn't Debbie or Mary... I knew that I would have felt them before they got that close to me.

It had to be Aimee.

It better not be somebody from the VA!

It was Aimee.

I opened the door, and found Aimee there with a pizza box in her hands. "Please let me in, Jim."

I hadn't realized how hungry I was, and the pizza smelled wonderful.

I smiled at her, and beckoned her into Mary's apartment.

Aimee smiled back at me and came in. She walked past me and placed the box on the dining table.

"Well, Jim... I can imagine that you have a lot on your mind right now."

"Aimee, you have a gift for understatement," I said, giving her a wan smile.

Aimee gave me a pretty smile, and answered, "You seem to have an interesting gift as well."

I chuckled at her comment, and continued to look at her.

After about a minute, Aimee said, "I've been thinking a lot about your gift, too. I think I can help you, if you'll let me."

"As long as you realize that I will not enslave you... not until I get a handle on this... this... 'gift.'"

There was a bit of a flash of disappointment in Aimee's face, but it changed into a concerned look. "May I help you, Jim?" she asked.

"What do you intend to do?" I asked, suspiciously.

"Why don't we just talk?" she asked.

Aimee spent the next hour or so explaining what she had been taught about those people that invade the dreams of the living.

When Aimee had been younger, she had believed those things, but as she grew older, part of her considered the old tales as myths, although she still remembered the stories that her Aunt told her quite vividly.

Aimee, as I said, had an unusual gift of her own: that of insight into other people. She told me that she used her gift to ensure that the people she was around were "good" people.

Aimee's mother worked hard to help Aimee pay her tuition to a collage where Aimee got her M.B.A.

The first person Aimee worked for out of college was James Malen, who was Debbie's father. Aimee knew instinctively when she met him that James was a good person. Aimee enjoyed working for him. Aimee knew that her boss really loved his daughter, and that love for his daughter, as well as his grief over his dead wife, was what drove him in his work.

Even with such a powerful drive behind him, James was an exception on Wall Street--he wasn't one to get ahead by screwing over his competition. In fact, James' unselfishness was legendary in the financial markets. As a result, Malen Associates had a very large and contented clientele.

James had a partner, Charles Penet. Aimee described him as a good person, also. However, Charles didn't completely share James' graciousness with competitors. James had known that, which is why his interest in the firm went straight to Debbie rather than his partner.

Before James' doomed flight, Aimee had a premonition that something unfortunate would happen to her boss. She knew that James seemed to always view her premonitions with a wry amusement, but he said that he didn't want to hurt her feelings, so he listened to her.

Aimee knew she couldn't talk him out of visiting Debbie for her moment of triumph, so she tried to change his reservations to a different flight. His private jet was unavailable for one reason or another. At the last minute, however, James' alternate flight got canceled, and he rescheduled himself back onto the very flight that Aimee had avoided.

Aimee's thoughts about the death of her boss were mixed. She believed in an afterlife, and knew that somebody like James would be well served in it. However, she felt bad for his daughter, who she hadn't met until after James passed away.

Despite working for James for a short period of time, she knew just about every aspect of his financial life, and she did everything she could to help transfer all of his personal assets to his daughter, and helped Debbie through the lengthy probate process. Money would never repay Debbie for the loss of her father, but it might help her get ahead in the world.

When Aimee finally met Debbie in person, she found that Debbie, like her father, was also a good person. The two girls got along immediately when they met, and Aimee easily agreed when Debbie asked for her to be her personal financial manager. Aimee could feel Debbie's sadness whenever she thought about her father, and Aimee's heart went out to her.

If Debbie's father had one failing, it was his relentless pursuit of success. James had acquired a lot of real estate properties... not only in the U.S., but around the world. He had acquired more money than he would ever be able to spend.

Aimee knew that Debbie didn't have that drive. Debbie, instead, was taking a few years off to enjoy herself. They had already visited places in Texas and Utah before heading for California.

Aimee had a premonition about her visit to California--not a bad one, but that something momentous would happen. Debbie hadn't known Aimee very long, and mostly saw Aimee's mystic side with amusement, like her father, and didn't put much stock in them.

I had heard a lot of this story from Debbie, but hearing it from Aimee's point of view was a bit educational.

"So, you have an a ability to know that a person is 'good' deep down," I said to Aimee, interrupting her story. "Since you continue to tell me that I have this quality, too, that should make me feel better?"

"No, Jim. You don't understand," Aimee said, frowning.

I sighed, wondering where Aimee was going.

"Jim, I have always had some sort of insight. My aunt called it a spiritual gift. However, my insights were never really specific, and they were usually tied to emotions. All I could usually get out of them would be that something is good or bad, or that something good or bad is about to happen."

"Yes. You explained that," I said, still confused.

"Because it was just feelings, even I didn't put too much faith in them. I was careful, like my attempt to reschedule Debbie's father's flight, but that was just being cautious. Even after her father died, I didn't get upset at myself for not having prevented it..."

Aimee paused, and I let her continue. She took a deep breath, and then looked deeply into my eyes. "Then yesterday happened."

I waited for Aimee to continue, but she didn't this time. "What happened yesterday?" I asked.

Aimee took another breath, getting a little exasperated at my failure to comprehend. "You happened. First, I heard from Debbie, and immediately, I know that something profound had changed in her. Something good, but very profound."

"OK," I said. I could see that.

"Then I met Mary a little bit later, and I knew the same thing had happened to her that had happened to Debbie. So I remembered that Debbie said that she met you, and I checked you out."

"Yeah," I said. "I knew that when you mentioned my military rank."

"I checked you out. It isn't easy, since the military doesn't like to give out personal records, but information is kept on computers, and it isn't difficult to get information out of those computers when you know what you are doing."

"Wait... you broke into the service's computers?" I asked, incredulously.

"No, not at all," Aimee assured me. "First, it was easy for me to track down Mary, since she was renting an apartment from Malen Associates. From there, I found out she had been in the military, and she had a few jobs locally. There were notations on some of her records that she visited a hospital patient quite regularly. Hearing that, I knew that you had to be that patient... I could feel it."

"Nowadays, there are many other places that have access to records. For instance, the hospital where you were staying. There were a few insurance companies, and a couple of medical schools who were monitoring your condition due to its unique nature. That sort of thing."

"You didn't have time to do all that!" I protested.

"I actually did. Malen Associates had clients in the insurance industry and in other places. It wasn't difficult to pull a few strings to find out the major parts of your story."

"How can that be? I don't even know the entire story!" I said, half to myself.

"I can imagine," Aimee said. The way she looked at me, I knew that she could tell how I felt.

There was an awkward pause for a few minutes when neither of us said anything.

Finally, Aimee broke the pause. "Jim, I know that you were inside Debbie's head yesterday when we were together."

I nodded; I had already known that she knew.

"I had been crying, as you know. It's obvious to me that you don't know why I was crying," she said.

I could see her eyes moisten again. "I know. Because I refused to make you my slave," I said, a bit exasperated about having to go into that again.

"You are wrong!" she said vehemently.

"Huh?"

"Yes. I do want you to make me yours, but that wasn't why I was crying."

I never really understood females, despite having been in the heads of two of them. Aimee was making this very obvious to me. I said nothing, allowing Aimee to continue.

"I was crying... because I was so happy for Debbie. Debbie still misses her father, but she now has found love. True love. The kind that only comes along once in a lifetime. When Debbie feels emotions, it's like I can feel them as well. I was so happy for her."

I said nothing, but I knew instinctively that what Aimee said was not completely true. What happened to Debbie also happened to Mary. If you think about it, it also happened to me. We all found each other. So much for "once in a lifetime."

Aimee saw me shaking my head in disagreement. "Maybe the term 'once in a lifetime' isn't the right one, but it's definitely true love. Soft, giving, and, most of all, final. There's a piece of me that feels so happy for Debbie for having experienced it. There's a piece of me that is a little..."

Aimee paused, and for the first time, cast her eyes down at her feet. "A little... jealous."

I reached out and pulled Aimee's face back and looked into her eyes. "Aimee, I am still not one hundred percent sure what is happening or has happened to me. I do know that this is unusual, and I need to come to terms with it. You can be a big part of helping me to understand. However, in order for me to do that, I really want you as you are. Not as somebody that I happened to enslave somehow."

"I understand, Jim," she assured me. "As I said before, intellectually, I understand you, and I may even agree with you, but emotionally..."

"I know that your emotions are important, Aimee. I promise to keep them in mind. OK?"

Something in her eyes sparkled. The she gave me a little smile. "I believe you. I also believe that you will do what you think is the right thing. That is really the best that one could hope for. You are a good person, and what you think is the right thing will be the right thing."

Her smile widened. "So, why don't you tell me how this whole thing got started?"

I started my story with my evening walk oh so long ago, through my experiences in the hospital--including the dreams--and ended with the events up to the current day. I included things from Mary's description to Debbie earlier as well.

Aimee listened in rapt attention, occasionally asking questions when I started to gloss over things, or when I started getting off the subject. Thankfully, she didn't have me describe my sexual encounters over the last couple of days in any detail, but it was obvious that she figured out that part of the "enslavement" was sexual.

After I had brought Aimee up to date, she sat in silence for about ten minutes. We shared the silence together.